Wrestling With Mickey Rourke

The buzz, now building to a roar, started last September, when a rush print of Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” won the Golden Lion for best picture at the Venice Film Festival. Then, last Sunday, the movie’s star, [movieperson id=”54512″]Mickey Rourke[/movieperson] — who might well have taken the best-actor award in Venice, if the festival’s rules hadn’t precluded it — won a Golden Globe
for his performance in the film. Next up: the Oscars — and “The Wrestler” is looking good.

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Could there be an unlikelier movie than this one? Made with French money — and very little of it — and shot in definitively unglamorous New Jersey in the grimmest depths of winter, “The Wrestler” is a raw, bloody character study of a faded pro grappler at the end of his ring career. And Rourke was a star so faded himself that when he took on the role of Randy “The Ram” Robinson, potential financial backers were scared away in droves. But it’s the autobiographical resonance the 52-year-old actor brings to the picture that makes it so spellbinding — and so heart-rending.